


A Kitten Almost Killed Richie Tozier

by TheWeirdOneL



Category: IT (2017)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, and he almost gets killed by a little kitten, and theres cuteness, but it might not make sense, cause i wrote this at 1 in the morning, in which richie tozier can drive, in which the losers club really fucking love richie tozier, its p good, they're all teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 05:28:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12292266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWeirdOneL/pseuds/TheWeirdOneL
Summary: Richie Tozier almost gets killed by a kitten, the Loser's club cries, and Eddie Kaspbrak realises just how much he loves his stupid trashmouth bestfriend.





	A Kitten Almost Killed Richie Tozier

**Author's Note:**

> I spent an hour or so writing this when I should've been doing History revision and I have 0 regrets.  
> Word Count: 3k+

****It was a snowy December evening when Richie Tozier got into a car crash and almost died. He’d left school only a few hours before after a 2 hour long detention for getting into a fight with one of the younger kids. It was only meant to be an hour long, but the teacher who caught him hated his guts and thought it right to add another hour. Just for the sake of making the boy suffer. It was 6pm when he finally left. Anyone else would’ve rushed home the moment they were freed but instead he spent an extra hour chilling on the top of his truck blasting out heavy metal and lighting up a few cigarettes outside the borders of school. Close enough that the noise would piss off the teachers still there, but far away enough that he was out of school perimeters and could do whatever the fuck he wanted. Maybe if he had just gone home he would’ve been okay. But Richie Tozier was a spiteful bastard and one day it would be the death of him. **  
**

It was 7pm when he squished his last cigarette down onto the ground. It disappeared into the snow, which was beginning to grow more and more with each second. The town of Derry always suffered from bad Winters, so Richie wouldn’t have been surprised if a blizzard was on it’s way. The snow brought with it a fog that covered up most of the road, and even with the headlights on Richie couldn’t see shit in front of him. He tried driving slow; for once Richie actually tried being careful like he was always told too. But the ground just below the snow was pure ice, and when a small little kitten trudged it’s way into the road - barely visible until Richie saw it’s little head poke up in fear - there was no way he could’ve stopped the car from swerving. He hit the brakes hard, but the truck ended up spinning so furiously that there was no stopping it crashing into the van coming towards him. The moment it made impact with Richie’s small little truck it flipped on it’s side and fell upside down. The van stopped for a second, and the driver peeked out of his window in fear before leaving unharmed. Richie, meanwhile, sat stuck in his seat - his seatbelt the only thing keeping his head from bashing onto the ground. At some point he had hit his head on the steering wheel, losing consciousness before he could feel his arm go straight through the window and before he could hear one of his legs snap from the impact.

The ambulances didn’t get there until an hour after. A blizzard had, infact, hit the town of Derry that night - it made it almost impossible for them to get there. But they did eventually, and it took two ambulances worth of paramedics to get Richie out of his truck. He was alive; breathing shallow, bleeding profusely from his left arm, but alive. He was rushed to the hospital immediately, the only company his unconscious self had were the paramedics and one small, freezing cold little kitten that refused to leave his side.

The Loser’s club, still Richie’s best friends at the age of 18, found out when morning finally came. The blizzard had left Derry sometime in the middle of the night, and though snow was still piled up on the ground it was nowhere near as bad as it had been before. Bill and Stan had invited everyone out to get breakfast at one of the local diners; it was Richie’s idea, really, because he absolutely loved the food. They all turned up on time, waiting impatiently for Richie to arrive before they ordered. But time went on without him. Five minutes became ten minutes, and ten became twenty. Then twenty turned into an hour, and they were still waiting. When it came to food Richie was never this late.

“What’s taking him so long?” Mike asked, searching around the diner for any sign of the lanky, curly-haired boy. The others looked around worried, hoping to see Richie’s familiar red truck pull up into the parking lot outside and Richie himself rush in and make some stupid joke about being busy with one of their moms. It didn’t happen, and it wasn’t until two young women sat in the booth beside them that they heard what had happened.

“Did you hear about the accident last night? Poor boy got into a hit and run. People are absolutely dreadful, aren’t they? I can’t imagine they could live with themselves, never knowing whether that teenager survived or not” one of them said, sipping her tea as though it didn’t really affect her in the slightest. It was Beverly that got up first, always the confrontational one. She had no way of knowing it was Richie; call it ‘best-friend instinct’ maybe, but she couldn’t stop herself as she asked the two strangers,

“What does the boy look like?”

The others looking up at her confused. They all knew something was wrong. They didn’t know what just yet, but Eddie especially couldn’t shake the awful pain growing in his chest. Not an aching or stinging type of pain. It was a pain that was beginning to grow into his heart and decay it from the inside and squeeze his lungs so tight he felt like he needed his inhaler even though he knew his lungs were perfectly fine.

“I’m sorry dear, we don’t know,” the woman said, but she handed the younger girl the latest newspaper with ease and turned back to her own conversation. It didn’t have any pictures of any people, but it did have one, and Ben had to stand up and hold onto Beverly before her knees gave out. But as he saw the picture he felt his own legs weaken and he had to drag them back down into the booth. Beverly dropped the newspaper on the table in disbelief, and Eddie let out a strangled sob as the familiar truck was pictured right at the top of the page. It was Richie’s truck; they knew because on the side it had Loser scratched onto it courtesy of the boy himself. It was flipped over on it’s side with the door having been removed and left in the snow. The glass had been clearly shattered, and the front of the car was smashed to bits. Though the picture was in black and white, they all knew the patch of grey by the side of the door was blood. Richie’s blood.

None of them could move. Beverly was on the verge of tears, shaking as she held onto Ben with such an intense grip she felt like her fingers were going to break. Ben held onto her, body shaking as he tried to stop himself from sobbing. Mike and Bill and Stan sat dumbfounded. They couldn’t even bring themselves to cry or do anything because they saw Richie yesterday in Maths right at the end of the day. Because Stan told Richie to shut up with a smile before they parted ways for the day, and Mike reminded him to do the homework even though he knew he wouldn’t, and Bill smugly told him to have a great detention before going home. He couldn’t have gotten into a crash when they had just spoken to him less than _12 hours ago_. Eddie had his hands in his hair, nearly tearing strands out as he repeated a soft string of No’s under his breath. They all assumed the worst. How couldn’t they when the headline said in big bold letters: **“Car crash victim found by paramedics an hour after collision in Derry’s worst blizzard in 10 years.”**

Bill stood up shakily, his legs feeling like jelly but his mind strong. There was only one hospital in Derry, and he wasn’t about to waste anymore minutes sitting around when their best friend could be dying. He had replaced all his sadness with fury; whatever he could possibly get mad at, he did. He was angry at the other driver, who hit his best friend and just left him to die. He was angry at the paramedics for not getting their sooner, even though he knew it wasn’t their fault. He was angry at Derry, because bad shit always happened to them in this shitty town.

“C-come on you guys. Rich n-needs us” Bill said, his words quiet but stern. They’d attracted a lot of attention, but Bill couldn’t care less as he grabbed his keys and started walking before any of them had even gotten up yet. They followed eventually, abandoning the newspaper on the table like if they looked at it any longer then it would all become too real. All six of them piled into Bill’s car, and time seemed to quicken tenfold as he drove them to the hospital.

As soon as they got there they rushed up to the receptionist, begging for him to let them see Richie. The place was empty save for a few people, so when all six of them barged in at once it caused up such a stir that some nurses came to the waiting room just to make sure they weren’t troublemakers. The receptionist looked confused, but shuffled through his papers until he found the recent file belonging to Richie Tozier and recognised the teenager’s face.

“Ah yes, he was brought in last night after a car crash,” the man said, sadness laced in his voice as he looked at them all one by one. They all looked like shit; all of them either crying, or having already cried, or just looking generally dead inside. “What is your affiliation to Mr. Tozier?”

“We’re his family.”

The words came out of Eddie’s mouth like it was the most natural thing to say. And it was. They weren’t just the Loser’s club, or the lucky seven, or the kids who survived the killer clown of 1989. They were family, they would always be family. And the others nodded in agreement, not second-guessing Eddie’s words because they all saw it as truth. The receptionist eyed them cautiously, but he couldn’t deny the obvious love and concern they had for their friend. So he sighed, and reluctantly told them where Richie was.

“He was only just released from surgery a few hours ago and is still likely to be asleep. You’ll have to ask the doctors there if you can see him, otherwise you’ll have to wait outside his room” the receptionist added, but they’d all left to find Richie’s room before he could even finish his sentence. All he saw was the doors next to the desk swinging and the backs of the teenagers as they ran down the hall.

They didn’t care as they bumped into empty gurneys and were told multiple times to stop running by nurses and doctors alike. None of them could stop until they found Richie’s room. They almost couldn’t believe it when they did. He was alone, laying unconscious in his bed looking pale and sickly. His right leg was held up to one of the metal bars in a cast, while his injured left arm hung limp by his side, covered completely in bandages. All over his face were plasters and bruises from the crash, but otherwise he looked intact and a collective sigh of relief escaped the group. A doctor left the room just as they were about to barge in, stopping them all in their tracks.

“Unfortunately Richie is unable to have visitors right now, but you may sit out here and wait until he has woken up,” the doctor ordered, writing something or other on his clipboard. None of them could argue, feeling the weight of the stress they felt before leave and be replaced by exhaustion. Although they were relieved, none of them would be truly happy until they saw Richie smiling again. But until then there was nothing they could do, so they sat down on the chairs outside and waited.

Eddie couldn’t sit still. He paced up and down the length of Richie’s room, watching with bated breath for any sign of movement. Beverly tried to get him to sit, but even when she managed to convince him he was up again 5 minutes later. He knew Richie was alive, and that he was okay and that he would wake up, but he couldn’t stop himself from freaking out. He couldn’t stop his eyes falling over every injury dotted along Richie’s body and he couldn’t stop his heart from tearing apart piece by piece at each one. The pain he felt now was nothing like the pain before, it was so much worse. Because this was Richie. The trashmouth asshole who snuck into his room at 3 in the morning at least once a week because he couldn’t stand to hear his parents shouting any longer or because “I just wanted to see you, Eds.” The idiot who would pinch Eddie’s cheeks and hug him in a way that made Eddie feel warm and safe and loved and protected from this shitty world. The one who sat with him under the stars every night after the summer of 1989 and told him about how he wanted to get out of Derry one day and take all of them with him to the big city and “Of course you’ll be by my side Eds, I’m not leaving this shitty town without you.” Because this was Richie fucking Tozier, the boy Eddie hated so much more than any other person he’d met because he was so unbelievably, painfully, in love with him. And Eddie was so fucking close to losing him that it hurt more than anything he’d ever felt before.

So when Richie finally started stirring, 2 hours after they had arrived, Eddie was the first to rush in without even asking the doctor fro permission. He didn’t let Richie speak as he lunged onto the bed and wrapped his arms around his neck and sobbed into his shoulder. Richie let out a small, strained ‘ow’, but laughed and used his free hand to bring Eddie closer. The other five rushed in quickly behind, not hesitating as they fell into a group hug with Richie squished into the middle.

“Ow, ow, pain,” Richie groaned, his voice crackly and weak. Eddie didn’t like it, but he let go of Richie and sat back while the others brought in chairs from outside and sat close around his bed. For a few moments none of them said anything, just basked in each other’s presence and thanked whatever higher power they believed in that Richie was alive. Eddie kept his eyes on the boy he loved, worried that if he took them away for a second he would look back and he wouldn’t be there anymore. Richie looked around at all of them, smiling with the sincerest of smiles even though it hurt to smile and they were all a bit blurry and he was a bit dazed still. Then his eyes fell on Eddie, and his breath hitched because Eddie was looking at him with the eyes of someone who was in love. Then and there all he wanted to do was hold his best friend and wipe away the tears on his cheeks and just kiss him because even though he doesn’t remember how he knows he almost died yesterday and there was no way he was going to get a  _third_  chance at life and still not kiss Eddie Kaspbrak. But he couldn’t do it here. He felt too weak to move. So instead he smiled wider, even though it hurt, and said,

“Don’t cry for me, Eds. I told you I’m not leaving Derry without you.” And it was the closest Richie could get to saying ‘I love you’ right now, and Eddie heard it because he replied, “You better not, trashmouth. And don’t call me Eds,” but he was smiling too much to look annoyed.

For the rest of the day, until an hour before visitors had to leave, the Loser’s club stayed in Richie’s room and did everything they could to make the boy laugh no matter how much the doctor advised against it. They hated having to leave him here, but there was no way Richie was getting out a day after surgery. Over the course of the day Richie regained some of his memories; distinctly remembering a kitten and a shit load of snow and a van, and then nothing. He was smart enough to connect the dots, and for once in his life Richie was _far_  too embarrassed to tell his friends. Because  _the_  Richie Tozier almost got killed by a fucking kitten. He couldn’t believe it.

Bill and Stan were the first to leave. Before they did, Stan told him that if he ever scared him like that again he would kill him himself and Bill hugged him so tightly that Richie almost suffocated. Mike left next, and he promised he would get Richie’s truck and fix it up nice and good for him and that he would come back every single day to check up on him. Beverly and Ben left not long after, Ben giving him one of his famous warm hugs that made everyone feel at ease and Bev promising to buy him a pack of cigarettes as soon as he got out and telling him she never wants to lose her smoking buddy. And Richie laughed and waved all of them off until it was just him and Eddie left in the room and there were 30 minutes left until Eddie had to leave.

“I drove carefully, you know,” Richie said, looking out of the window at the snow with a soft but sad look on his face. He didn’t look at Eddie until he clarified, “there was a kitten in the road and I tried to brake and then everything just sort of happened.” He wanted to tell Eddie, because it was always Eddie that shouted at him to drive more carefully and he never wanted Eddie to think badly of him.

Eddie still didn’t speak. He just watched Richie with amazement because this tough guy who pissed off everyone and got into fights with anyone got himself into a fatal car crash because of a kitten and suddenly Eddie was more in love now than he had been when he walked into the room. “I wanted you to know, because I don’t want you thinking I was being dumb or anything.”

“I think you’re always dumb.”

Richie laughed weakly, coughing ever so slightly and groaning as he felt every bone in his body rattle. The doctor came in, telling Eddie he had to get ready to leave soon and even though Richie had been begging all night the doctor still refused to let Eddie sleep in the room. Eddie sighed, but before he could get up he felt Richie’s hand on the back of his neck. He looked over at Richie, who had that weak smile plastered on his lips and such tiredness in his eyes that they were beginning to flutter shut.

“Give me your forehead,” Richie said, his voice so soft it almost didn’t sound like him. Eddie looked at him confused, until he felt Richie pull him closer so their foreheads were touching. Eddie closed his eyes, and so did Richie, and then suddenly Richie pulled Eddie closer and brought his lips to his. Soft and sweet, and all at once fireworks were exploding inside Eddie’s stomach and he had to stop himself from kissing the boy forever. Even when their lips parted their foreheads stayed touching, and Eddie looked down at the boy who had a stupid smile on his face and in a sudden burst of dumb confidence he said,

“You’re my boyfriend now.” Because all Eddie could think about at that moment was that the first boy he ever loved could’ve died before Eddie could tell him how he felt and it was now or never.  And Richie laughed so loudly that he almost started choking, and when he calmed down he opened his eyes and said, “Okay, Eds.” When Eddie really had to go he pressed a kiss onto Richie’s warm forehead and promised to be back tomorrow with everyone else and Richie didn’t stop smiling all night.

They all came back every day until Richie was dispatched - a killer scar running along the bicep of his left arm and his leg still in a cast. The day he was let out Bill told everyone to meet at the quarry in the early morning but only five of them did. They sat around, worried about Eddie and Richie because five minutes turned into ten, and then ten turned into twenty.

But then a few minutes after half an hour had passed, they watched as Richie hobbled along the dirt path with Eddie by his side. Richie had a small, fluffy little thing held up against his chest with one hand and in the other hand he held onto Eddie’s. They all stood up, and helped Richie sit down on the ground and watched with confusion as he let go of a small, black and white little kitten. Richie didn’t say anything, just watched for a few moments as everyone cooed at it and fought to hold it.

“Everyone, this is the reason why I almost died” he deadpanned, and even though Eddie had heard the story before he snorted and Beverly almost choked on cigarette smoke and Stan let out such a laugh that Richie knew he was going to mock him about this forever. Bill and Mike and Ben just watched the kitten in awe, more interested in the little fluffball than anything else. “His name is Killer. Loser’s club, meet Killer. Killer, meet the Loser’s club.”

They spent the better part of the day just playing with the kitten, and at one point Eddie almost started crying again because Richie Tozier was here and alive and he was so in love with him but instead of crying he just grabbed the boys face and kissed him with such passion that the rest shouted at them to get a room.

When the day finally came that the Loser’s club left Derry for good - leaving behind the sewers and the blizzards and the shitty people - Killer came with them. He stayed with the Loser’s club as they hopped between flats together, and he stayed with Richie and Eddie when they finally got their own home together. And no one was left behind because Richie promised he was going to get them out of there one day and he would rather be damned than let any of them - including himself - die in that town.


End file.
